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PETROLEUM VEIN 


NORTHWESTERN VIRGINIA. 


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J. P. LESLEY. 

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May, 1863. 


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1863.] 


183 


[Lesley. 


Professor Lesley communicated a notice of a remarkable 
coal mine or Asphalt vein, cutting the horizontal Coal-mea¬ 
sures of Wood County, Western Virginia. 

Mr. Lesley said, that through the kindness of It. H. Gratz, Esq., 
of Philadelphia, a descriptive letter and a map had been submitted 
to him, which exhibited geological facts of more than ordinary interest 
to those who are studying the origin of the rock-oil deposits of the 
West. This letter agrees with previously received, but vague, reports 
of a true vein of bituminous coal or bitumen. The curious points of 
the case require careful investigation ; but there seems to be no good 
reason to doubt the essential correctness of the statement. 

The mine is situated on a four hundred acre tract of woodland 
(oak, elm, maple, walnut, &c.), the position of which, in relation to 
the rivers and railroad of the neighborhood, will be best shown by 
the accompanying map. Plate III. It may be well to premise a few 
words about the coal-measure region in the heart of which it lies. 

By referring to any map of all Virginia, it will appear that the 
North and South Branches of Hughes Biver unite and flow into the 
Little Kanawha about thirteen miles (in a direct line) above its junc¬ 
tion with the Ohio at Parkersburg. The mine itself is somewhat 
over twenty miles (in an air line) southeast of Parkersburg, and a 
little under eight miles in an air line, south 4° west (both true and 
magnetic), from the bridge of the Parkersburg Branch of the Balti¬ 
more and Ohio Railroad over the North Branch of Hughes River. 

Two peculiarities mark this “coal vein.” 1. It is vertical, while 
all the stratification of the country is nearly horizontal • and strikes 
S. 78° W. (N. 78° E.), whereas the strike of the country is S. 35° 
to 40° W. (N. 35° to 40° E.) 2. It is a solid bitumen-vein rather 

than a coal-bed. 

1. The country of the neighborhood is that of the central part of 
the great synclinal, which crosses the Ohio below Pittsburg, and 
stretches down through Western Virginia parallel to the Ohio River, 
into Eastern Kentucky. Across this broad and flat synclinal of coal- 
measure rocks there flow from southeast to northwest, to fall into 
the Ohio successively, beginning at the north, the branches of the 
Little Kanawha, of the Great Kanawha, the Guyandot, the forked 
branches of the Great Sandy, (and then in Kentucky) the head¬ 
waters of the Kentucky, the headwaters of the Cumberland, and 
finally in Tennessee, the headwaters of the Caney. All these fan¬ 
shaped water-basins have their highest or southeastern limit defined 


Lesley.] 


184 


[March. 


by the strike (N. E. and S. W.) of the more upturned rocks of the 
southeastern side of the synclinal. With the exception of the Great 
Kanawha main stream, a line drawn along so as just to touch the ex¬ 
treme tips of all the outermost twigs of these water-trees, will give 
the southeastern limit of the great Alleghany Mountain or Cumber¬ 
land Mountain coal area. Their waters collect in flowing northwest, 
break through the central measures and higher coals of the synclinal, 
and either join the Ohio (which flows along the depression between 
the upper and lower coal systems of the True Carboniferous), or the 
Kentucky and Cumberland Rivers further south. 

From this short description it may be inferred, and it is a correct 
inference, that this belt of synclinal, is in great measure an irre¬ 
claimable mountain wilderness; a labyrinth of narrow hog-back 
ridges and steep, deep, winding vales, providing spaces for agricul¬ 
ture only along the narrow margins of the principal streams, and at 
here and there a little upland plain, caught in between the head¬ 
waters of half a dozen fan-shaped systems of drainage; but all the 
rest covered with an everlasting forest, folding over the furrowed 
face of the earth. The region consists in fact of myriads of secluded 
glens, surrounded by stair-like cliffs from four to eight hundred feet 
in height, and separated by spiculae of mountain, which shoot out 
from the more central water-divides, like crystals of ice over the sur¬ 
face of a pool. The extremely tortuous course of the principal 
streams is illustrated by the map. They do not flow from side to side 
of wide, flat valleys, but around sharp mountain prongs, which point 
across towards opposite open ravines or valleys of considerable 
length. These prongs descend from the dividing high lands, like 
the spurs of the Pyrenees from the central ridge, but in long steps, 
the strata being nearly horizontal, and each sandrock in the descending 
order carrying the nose out further than the one above it. Narrow 
terraces carry the outcrops of the long steps of the nose, round each 
side of the prong along the steep side of the valley. 

The coal-beds pass horizontally through the pronglike ridges from 
valley to valley. Some of these ridges run as narrow on top and 
as regular as railroad embankments, for three or four miles, and in 
nearly straight lines, between equally straight vales terminating bowl¬ 
shaped against some cross ridge. 

It is across such vales and dividing ridges, that the Asphaltqm 
vein of Wood County makes a straight course, A B upon the map, 
u 2323 feet long, as at first measured, but since then traced in both 
directions still further, so that now it is known to extend more than 


1863.] 


185 


[Lesley. 


two-thirds of a mile.” Explorations beyond this line have failed to 
find it. Its outcrop, four feet ten inches thick, was discovered cross¬ 
ing a ravine fifty feet wide at the bottom, and rising on each side 
with slopes of nearly forty-five degrees. On one of these hillsides at 
a height of ninety feet, the outcrop showed the same thickness, but 
at a height of one hundred and eighty-five feet, it was found to he 
but two feet six inches thick. It is not certain that this diminution 
is in a vertical direction; it may be lateral; for the slope between 
the ninety and the hundred and eighty-five feet levels is more gra¬ 
dual, especially upon the western side. 

In the bottom of the ravine, a vertical shaft was sunk to a depth 
of thirty-four feet upon the vein, which continued uniformly four 
feet ten inches thick, the asphaltum being filled in, pure and clean, 
without the least admixture of earthy or foreign ingredients, between 
the smooth and almost perfectly vertical walls of yellowish-greenish 
sandstone, lying in horizontal layers, through which this gash or fault 
was once no doubt an open fissure, communicating with some reservoir 
of coal oil, which still, it may be, lies beneath it undisturbed. The 
most interesting part of the phenomenon for structural geologists is 
this gash. 

2. The substance which fills this gash-fault in the coal-measures of 
Northwestern Virginia, resembles the glossiest, fattest caking coals, 
and has a decidedly prismatic structure; breaks up into pencils, with 
flat, lustrous faces and sharp edges, but the faces not set at any fixed 
angles to each other; so that the effect upon the eye is rather that 
of a fibrous than of a prismatic structure. At the same time there 
is not the slightest appearance of layers, but the aspect of complete 
uniformity or homogeneity. Pieces are taken out, it seems, a foot 
in diameter; and that portion of one of these pieces which I have, 
shows a plain face on one side, as if it had encountered one of the 
walls, and is covered with a delicate film of a dead black substance 
like charcoal dust, which is probably the dust of the vein substance 
itself. 

“ Pieces lying at the surface of the ground are said to yield as much 
oil as specimens taken out six or eight feet down. By the ordinary 
dry distillation, the substance is reported to yield as much oil as the 
Albert coal. By a different process, the first and only trial, at which 
600 pounds in one charge was used, 44£ gallons of superior oil was 
obtained. Retorts are now upon the ground/’ 

By an assay made by Mr. B. S. Lyman, of Philadelphia (the 
amount of hydrocarbon soluble in benzole being about one-half of the 


Lesley.] 


186 


[March. 


whole) the volatile matter (mean of two assays) was 47.11 per cent., 
Coke (52.71, 53.07) 52.89; Ash (1.65, 1.81) 1.73. 

There seems to be no escape from the conclusion that the sub¬ 
stance filling this vertical vein is a product of the gradual oxidation 
of coal oil once filling the open fissure. It is not impossible there¬ 
fore that the lower regions of the fissure are still filled with liquid 
oil; and that we may see in this instance an illustration of the con¬ 
dition of things far beneath the surface of the coal oil regions of 
Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. The vast quantities of oil 
delivered by the flowing, the blowing, and the spouting wells require 
fissures of this kind, either never opened up clear to the surface, or 
else once opened and now reclosed, or else filled in with detritus. 
The different depths at which closely neighboring wells begin to 
spout or to flow, oblige us to imagine similar fissures at oblique an¬ 
gles. If Sterry Hunt’s hypothesis be accepted, that the Corniferous 
Limestone is the mother rock of the oil, such fissures become still 
more needful to bring the oil to the surface, from the vast depths at 
which the Corniferous Limestone underlies the True Coal-measures. 

Vanuxem first described the films and buttons of “ anthracite,” as 
he called it, with and in the quartz crystals of the Calciferous Sand- 
rock of New York, at the base of the Silurian system. Mr. Hunt 
describes the veins and fissures of all the limestone, shale, and sand¬ 
stone members of the great Quebec Group (which is the enlarged 
equivalent of the Calciferous in New England and Canada) as fre¬ 
quently either lined or filled with a similar substance. Sometimes 
the varnish lining has cracked in shrinking; sometimes botryoidal 
masses of it have been left; sometimes hundreds of pounds of it are 
packed away solid in the crevices. In one exceedingly instructive 
case the vein of bitumen, inclosed in walls of rock crystal, is itself 
cut by thin seams of quartz.* 

* Hunt in Amer. Journal, March, 1863, p. 163. The force of the argument 
deducible from this fact, against the igneous, and in favor of the aqueous produc¬ 
tion of our quai'tz veins, will be felt at a glance. I cannot but express my sur¬ 
prise that Sir David Brewster should continue to claim as an argument for the 
igneous theory, the presence of two different elastic hydrocarbon fluids in cavi¬ 
ties in topaz, beryl, and diamond, especially in regard to the permanent compres¬ 
sion they have effected in the molecular structure of the walls of the cavities, as 
detected by polarized light. (Trans. R. S. Edinb., XXIII, i.) Yet M. Eournet 
supports his argument. (Comptes-rendus, LI, p. 42, LIII, pp. 83, 610 ; Geol. 
Lyonnaise, Lyons, 1861, pp. 533, 715, quoted by Sir David Brewster.) While M. 
Elie de Beaumont rests for its refutation on the volatility of the fluids, and the 
frequency of fluid-cavities in all quartz gangue rock. (Comptes-rendus, LIII, p. 
83.) Sir David Brewster says that M. Fournet “has removed this difficulty'’ 
(Geol. Lyon., p. 536), but does not say how. 


1863.] 


187 


[Lesley. 


In these older instances of bitumen veins, we see small prototypes 
of the large vein under consideration. 

The point of the phenomenon most interesting to structural geolo¬ 
gists is this: Two opposite deductions are possible from the facts as 
made known, on the one side in favor of the vast antiquity of the 
coal oil, and on the other side in favor of the recent denudation of 
the surface. If we have in this vein a deposit of coal oil hardened 
by time and the absorption of oxygen, it is certain that the cutting 
out of the ravines across which it lies, must have taken place subse¬ 
quently ; for the outcrop rises to a height of nearly two hundred feet on 
each side of the bottom of the ravine in which the shaft is sunk. I 
do not learn from the report whether detached blocks or pieces of the 
bitumen occur upon the surface, or in the alluvium of the vale below 
the crossing of the vein. But that is of no consequence to the prin¬ 
ciple. The valleys which it crosses must be younger than the vein, 
if the vein was filled with fluid oil. Hunt shows plainly (see Sill. 
Journ., March, 1863, p. 167), that the oil which fills the fossil casts 
of particular exceptional strata in the Lower Devonian Formation (as 
in Bertee Township on the Niagara River opposite Buffalo), must 
be an original deposit, and not a subsequent infiltration or exudation, 
inasmuch as it has lined with oxidized bitumen the cavities of the 
fossil casts in this stratum, and not those in similar strata above and 
below. 

All that we know of the grooving of the surface of our palaeozoic 
areas consents to the great antiquity of the action, whatever that 
action may have been. To demonstrate the antiquity of the Corni- 
ferous coal oil, is merely to give more room for the antiquity of the 
oil. Yet, the denudation, however ancient we may make it, must 
still be kept more modern than the antecedent formation of the coal 
oil and its change to bitumen. 

The date of the formation of the oil may be placed anywhere be¬ 
yond the close of the Palaeozoic era, even as far back as the begin¬ 
ning of the Devonian, or even in Lower Silurian times; since the 
Quebec Group is also the home of oil. The denudation of the sur¬ 
face of the coal areas cannot of course be put back beyond the uplift 
of that area into the air. 

There remain two hypotheses for dating this denudation. One 
class of geologists, the Cataclysmists, give the date of the uplift as the 
date of the denudation ; make the two phenomena related and depen¬ 
dent parts of one great action. The other class, the Secularists, re¬ 
gard the present face of the country as but the latest phase of an 


Lesley.] 


188 


[March. 


infinite series, beginning at the uplift and still in progress. An 
intermediate view, held perhaps by some eclectics, supposes a succes¬ 
sion of denuding actions of unknown force and indefinite number. 

As to the Appalachian region of the United States, I think that 
the principal special objection to the theory of one cataclysm (apart 
from general considerations) has not been mentioned, or at least 
clearly stated. And yet it seems to me of great force. It is a de¬ 
duction from the fact that the estuary bed of the New Red deposit, 
taken as a grand whole, can hardly be regarded otherwise than as a 
part of the Post Carboniferous denuded surface, and therefore subse¬ 
quently formed to the great cataclysm supposed by that theory to 
have produced that surface. For the surface of the New Red is 
eroded exactly in the style, and in the direction of, and in entire 
harmony with the erosion of the surface of the Coal; which of course 
would make the supposed cataclysm subsequent to both. Two cata¬ 
clysms being therefore required, a new difficulty appears. 

Supposing the first cataclysm to have eroded the palaeozoic areas, 
so that the deepest valleys of erosion nearest the Atlantic seaboard 
could be filled in with New Red deposits, why were these deposits 
restricted to the New Red estuaries, so well known as to need no 
description here ? Every one is aware that New Red is nowhere 
seen behind the range of the South Mountain or Blue Ridge. Yet 
there are plenty of gaps wide and deep enough to let it through. If 
it had ever been deposited in the great Lower Silurian Valley behind 
that range, no cataclysm can be supposed to have acted with such 
consummate skill and completeness, that not a hillock or corner bit 
should have remained to tell the story of where its outspread masses 
had originally lain. 

If now, to meet this difficulty, the Cataclysmist brings down the 
date of his first agency to Post Secondary days, and imagines the 
New Red rocks to have been excluded from the Great Valley because 
in fact, no such valley, and no gaps leading into it, had as yet been 
formed, he not only encounters the old difficulty of providing its es¬ 
tuary bed for the New Red, but in addition to that, the awkward 
statement that the gigantic anticlinals of the Palaeozoic age, once 
made, remained, uplifting their more than Andean or Himalayan 
masses in the sky, (with all the climatal consequences of such a 
supposition), during all the ages through which the so-called Per¬ 
mian of Kansas, and the New Red, and the so-called Oolite of the 
Atlantic seaboard, were depositing their layers. 

And when he has settled all this properly, the discussion will re- 


1863.] 


189 


[Lesley. 


open upon him in the same form anew, so soon as the denudation of 
the Cretaceous and Tertiary surfaces come to be regarded as in like 
manner in harmony with those of older dates. 

At Cornwall, six miles south of Lebanon, hills of New Red Sand¬ 
stone, three, four, and perhaps five hundred feet high, stand, looking 
in upon the great Silurian plain, like Peris at the gates of a Paradise 
they cannot enter. If along this line a fault has in fact carried the 
New Red down to the present level of the Silurian plain, the denu¬ 
dation of the two surfaces is nevertheless so far one phenomenon, 
that in its present condition it is to be explained by reference to 
actions subsequent to the deposit of the Conglomerate, or upper¬ 
most New Red layer, the so-called Potomac marble. But the hypo¬ 
thesis of a fault along the south base of the South Mountain is a 
pure fiction of embarrassment. If it existed anywhere, it must ex¬ 
tend several hundred miles, and be approximately a straight line. 
The most cursory glance at the geological map of Pennsylvania will 
satisfy any one that no such fault exists. The succession of spurs of 
the mountain range forbids it. The gophered edge of the New Red 
on the Lancaster County limestone forbids it, and shows how entirely 
superficial the New Red is. No river section shows the fault. It 
is a pure fiction. The northwest dip of the New Red against the 
Azoic mountain range is still a problem to be solved. 

The hypothesis of suboceanic erosion, contended against by the 
geologists of the United States almost from the beginning, is fast 
losing, if it has not lost altogether its hold upon the European mind. 
The conviction is well established, which we freely expressed years 
ago, that the ocean is a builder and not a leveller. Like the quie- 
tistic and subjective letter M, which was its symbol in ancient litera¬ 
ture, the main, the murmuring Typhon, has always been the absorber, 
and the mother of multitudes. While the fringe of foaming breakers, 
the Herculean Hydra, and in fact all river water, the rushing and 
hissing Typhon, of which the letter S was symbolic, has always been 
the destroyer, the enemy of the established, the ravager of the sur¬ 
face. It was upon this basis that some subaerial cataclysmic hypo¬ 
thesis like that of Professor Rogers came to be favored by those 
who knew the grandeur of the work which had been done by the 
denuding force whatever it was, among the palaeozoic anticlinals of 
America; and who felt the perfect harmony which reigned over the 
whole expanse of the phenomenon, from the Tertiary seaboard of the 
Atlantic and the Gulf, past the beds of the great freshwater Devo- 

vol. ix.—z 


Lesley.] 


190 


[March 


man and Silurian lakes, to the original shores of the Laurentian Con¬ 
tinent. 

We cannot regard, therefore, without some natural chagrin, the 
latest treatment of the subject by Professor Tyndale and Professor 
Ramsay, of England; for these accomplished observers not only take 
up our own old views with all the empressement of new discoveries, 
but make what seems to us the very absurd attempt to carry the 
petty energies of mountain floods and local glaciers up to the 
work of excavating, not merely lakes like those of Como, Constance, 
and Geneva, but such seas as Lake Huron and Lake Superior. It 
is gratifying, however, to see that such views can be refuted by 
European observers, who have never encountered the phenomenal 
problems of America. The impossibility that a moving glacier after 
descending to sea level, should excavate the bed of a lake, and con¬ 
tinue to move up and over its farther end, even taking the smallest 
Alpine lake known for an example, is admirably demonstrated by Mr. 
Ball in the February number of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin 
Philosophical Magazine for 1863. If this be not possible for the 
tarns among the valleys where glaciers are at home, how can it be 
possible for lakes and seas, where the existence of glaciers at any 
epoch is a theory ? And how reckless of all consequences must that 
theory be, which reads an incantation to these icy demons, to accom¬ 
plish the symmetrical erosion of a triangular area of earth-surface a 
thousand miles on each side long, the southern angle of which touches 
the parallel of 33° ! 

Professor Ramsay calls attention to the remarkable fact that the 
lakes of Europe and America seem to be confined to the scratched 
and grooved portion of the hemisphere, and that they are not found 
further south than the drift, except in Alpine, that is to say, in gla¬ 
cial regions. This is a coincidence, indeed, which ought to harmonize 
the two phenomena under some theory; but not necessarily subordi¬ 
nate the one to the other as effect and cause. I have no satisfactory 
explanation to give for the coincidence. The special reasons for the 
existence of each separate lake can be easily pointed out. The dam¬ 
ming back of the waters of the New York Devonian lakes, including 
Erie and Huron, are due to the gentle northward rise of their floor- 
rock. Lakes in the same soft Devonian measures, are numerous 
along the valley of Pennsylvania, at the foot of the Alleghany Moun¬ 
tain, but only where the measures are gently inclined. Lakes dis¬ 
appear from the map as the eye passes southeastward over the more 
upturned regions. Steepness of dip is hostile to deep excavation. 


1863.] 


191 


[Lesley. 


The reverse is true of erosion above water-level. Steepness of dip is 
favorable to aerial disintegration, to the dissection of stratification, to 
the subdivision of one massif into several, and of one hillock into 
many; hence to the general degradation of the surface under air. 
But under water the reverse is true. 

In the Laurentian and Huronian, Scandinavian or Azoic regions of 
the North, where distortion and plication have revelled from the be¬ 
ginning to reduce things to anarchy, and where alternate potash 
rocks and limestones form the boldest contrast of endurance and 
decay, lakes abound. A clean, smooth drainage system, worked out 
so completely (without stating the agency) as to leave no holes, nor 
cul de sacs pointing in the wrong direction, nor crooked lakes, is 
possible only when the stratification is clean and in good order, cut¬ 
ting equally and smoothly in all directions according to the force, 
and permitting the law of compensation to have free course in the 
establishment of a common and gently declining niveau of reference 
to water-level. But any conceivable erosive agency, cataclysmic or 
secular, must encounter a million contretemps, in smoothing off its 
work over a country like Canada, where no outcrop runs far without 
doubling like a hare. Sir William Logan has shown that the crooked 
lakes and lake-like rivers of that country conform to the plications 
of the primary limestone belts. 

Mr. Ball’s own hypothesis of an original fault structure for the 
lake system of the Alps is not new, and is open to as much objection 
on other grounds, as the theory of Professor Ramsay which he over¬ 
throws. If applied to the Devonian lake system of New York and 
Pennsylvania, and therefore, of course, to the thorough-cut valley sys¬ 
tem of the Carboniferous plateau of the Alleghany Mountains of 
Northern Pennsylvania, it will not find a fact to stand upon. Not a 
trace of fault structure is to be seen over all that immense region; 
yet the erosion is in straight lines, north and south, and from five 
hundred to a thousand feet deep. Also not a trace of original glacial 
action can be found. Diluvial striae are rare ; moraines and taluses 
are wanting. Not one has yet been recorded, if any exist, nor have 
I ever seen throughout that region, any resemblance to one which 
did not resolve itself on examination into a barrier outcrop, slightly 
masked by soil or local drift; and even instances of this kind are 
rare. 

On the other hand, throughout that whole region, the Lyellist 
can find no evidence of a slow wear and tear through the ages. The 
region is swept too clean for that. There are no piles of detritus, no 


( 


t 


Lesley.] 


192 


[March. 


cones at the mouths of ravines, no plains of sand and clay, no deltas 
at the embouchures of streams and heads of lakes, such as, in the 
Auvergne, and in the Alps and Pyrenees, impress the traveller with 
an instantaneous and irresistible conviction of slow wear and tear. On 
the contrary, the walls of the valleys, high as they are, are vertical 
bluffs, alternating with taluses of angular blocks fallen from them ] 
the bottoms of the valleys are clean] the lakes have steep shores, and 
the plains are covered with the disintegration of their own rocks. 
Everything one sees tells one story, and that the story of a cataclysm 
which, at one sweep, accomplished valleys, plains, and lakes, leaving 
next to nothing for all coming time to do, but to protect the surface 
with vegetation, and to send an annual contribution of the meanest 
value by the rivers to the sea. 

Two systems of valleys characterize the result, as we now study 
it. One parallel with the coast, and produced by the sweeping away 
of the tops of anticlinals from one to twenty miles wide and miles 
in height; the other a transverse system of river bottoms, sunk some 
few feet or yards below the longitudinal valley which they cross, and 
of deep, clean, straight gaps through the bounding mountains. It 
is demonstrable that these two systems are but two parts of one, and 
owe their origin to the same agency, and at essentially the same 
time. The peculiar relationship of the rivers to the gaps is sufficient 
of itself to prove this. Not a fault has been demonstrated in any of 
these gaps. One fault transverse to the Tussey Mountain occurs 
near one gap, that of the Juniata, and as if, by its loneliness and ex- 
centric position, for the express purpose of excepting to such a theory, 
if at any time one should be presented. It is not until the geologist 
has passed through the whole region, and has reached its southeast¬ 
ern limit, that he suspects a faulty gap. The Kittatinny or North 
Mountain is said to be faulted at the Delaware Water Gap, and at the 
Susquehanna] but so the Sharp Mountain was said to be faulted at 
the Swatara Gap, until careful instrumental work proved that the 
coal-beds on each side of the gap were not a hair’s breadth out of 
line. A fault at the Susquehanna is evidently absent, for the very 
outcrops of the different sandrocks can be traced, at low water, 
from side to side. And the fault at the Delaware Water Gap is, I 
believe, nothing but an effect of perspective upon the eye, produced 
by the inclined lines of cliff, unsymmetrically wrought out on the 
two sides of the gap, because the cutting force worked in a curve, 
produced by the presence of the expiring Red Hill anticlinal on its 
northern slope. 


1863.] 


193 


[Lesley. 


No. The excavation of the Appalachian surface has not been 
determined by transverse faults; but entirely by longitudinal flex¬ 
ures ; and has not been accomplished by glaciers; nor by rain and 
river water: still less sub oceano. By what then? I think much 
must be discovered before the question can be answered, if we reject 
subaerial deluge action. What for example do we know yet of the 
internal structure of those deep diluvions or alluvions which occur in 
our transverse river-bottoms, where they cross the longitudinal valleys 
of Devonian olive shale ? They seem to be ancient lakes, excavated 
at the time the topography of the valleys and mountains was deter¬ 
mined, and filled with river trash. As they occur in the transverse 
river valleys, they seem to own the rivers for progenitors. But being 
in line with the gaps, the occupation of them by the rivers seems, on 
the contrary, to be as fortuitous as the river-occupation of the gaps. 
Moreover, the present rivers are evidently the degenerate representa¬ 
tives of grander floods, and the silt of these depressions, judging by 
the surface, is of too gross and hasty a nature for collection by less 
than such original deluges. But supposing this also to be a fancy, 
w r hat relation does the glacial hypothesis, which presumes to annul 
the necessity for a cataclysmic eroding agent, propose to bear to 
parallels of latitude ? 

Wherein does the valley of the New River or Kanawha differ from 
that of the Susquehanna or Delaware, except in having no New York 
corals or Canada syenites among its pebbles. In every structural 
feature they are alike; and like the valley of the Tennessee in Ala¬ 
bama. There is no change in the height or constitution or form of 
the mountain plateau through which they cut. There is no change 
in the range to the southeast of them which can affect the question; 
for the Black Mountains of North Carolina, even if liable to suspi¬ 
cion as glacier-bearers, are far enough removed from the New River 
on the north, and the Tennessee on the south, to be of no account in 
this discussion. Is the glacial hypothesis prepared to defend its 
claims in Middle Alabama under the parallel of 33° ? If not, then 
it has no claims to any feature of the Catskill Mountains under the 
parallel of 43°, except their scratches; to which, so far as the gene¬ 
sis of mountains and valleys is concerned, it is quite welcome. Yet 
precisely this bonbon Professor Ramsay refuses it; for he maintains 
(against Dana), that the striae at the Catskill Mountain House were 
made by icebergs floating down the Hudson estuary, and not at all 
by glaciers. There is a disposition manifested of late among the 
American geologists, of the New England school, to fill each of the 


Lesley.] 


194 


[March. 


great valleys of the North with a great glacier of its own, naming 
them the Penobscot Glacier, the Connecticut Glacier, the Hudson 
Glacier, the Mohawk Glacier, the Susquehanna Glacier, &c. In view 
of Kane and Hayes’s discoveries of the present state of things in Green¬ 
land, and for easy accounting not only for such groups of east and 
west and north and south striae as appear at Cherry Valley, the Cats- 
kill House, and Wilkesbarre, but also for those which cross the pol¬ 
ished summits of our highest mountain tops, such as the Penobscot 
Knob which looks down upon the valley of Wyoming, there is 
not the same objection felt now as was at first expressed against the 
Agassizan cope of ice for the hemisphere. President Hitchcock 
finds its reliquial glaciers in the valleys of Hampshire and Berkshire, 
and Professor Dana explains the absence of moraines now by the 
absence of any aiguilles to overhang and shed their stone-slides upon 
the back, or upon the edges of its subdivided streams. 

The thus admitted absence of moraines, and the excuse advanced 
for it, return us unexpectedly to the starting-point of the discussion, 
the question. Could ice have fashioned our topography ? No one 
doubts its ability to scratch and groove and polish. Can it excavate ? 
And if it can, what is the limit of its excavating power ? Leaving 
the glacialists of the fixed-ice school and the floating-ice school to settle 
between them the force, frequency, direction, and exact modus operandi 
of striation, quite sure that they will at least agree on the date of the 
phenomenon as very recent , we are left at liberty to revert to those 
more remote days, when the broad-backed anticlinals rose into the 
sky higher than any Alpine aiguilles or Andean volcanic cones ; to 
speculate on, 1, Whether they were unbroken vaults; or split along 
their axes; 2. If split, whether split completely down to water-level, 
or how far; 3. Whether glaciers could have been then formed at all; 
4. Whether, if formed, they could excavate a valley five or ten miles 
deep into the heart of an unbroken anticlinal; or 5, Do more than 
polish the central gorge, if the anticlinal were broken; 6. How such 
a central glacier could escape from such a gorge sideways, or in any 
direction but endwise, at the limits of the crack; or 7. Fail to leave 
high walls, alpine ranges, peaks, aiguilles, and moraines behind it 
when it disappeared. 

Surely the glacialist must startle back from such an incredible pic¬ 
ture. The great obstacle in the way of topographical science among 
geologists, has been an innocent ignorance of the titanic postulates 
upon the ground; and therefore, an inability to reconstruct in imagi¬ 
nation the awful vaults of rock which have been removed from over 


1863.] 


195 


[Lesley. 


at least fifty thousand square miles of the surface of the United 
States, merely along the one belt of the Appalachian Mountains, be¬ 
tween the great coal area and the Blue Ilidge range. What has re¬ 
moved these massifs ? The excavation of a hundred Lake Superiors 
to the depth of two thousand feet would not present the same diffi¬ 
culties. Either a cataclysmic subaerial deluge mighty enough to do 
the work, or a series of such deluges following each other until the 
work was done, or the atmospheric agencies at work on every square 
inch of the whole area for almost an infinity of ages,—one or other of 
these three must be the accepted force. Ice may come in for its share 
of the byplay, at various and very early times (as Ramsay has made 
probable in Shropshire) as well as in the last days of its glory, the 
stamp of which we see left upon our outcrop surfaces; but to make it 
the initial agency of such erosion is absurd. The power of ice could no 
more have swept those symmetrical palaeozoic arches into the Atlan¬ 
tic, than a child could have flown to Loretto with its church. But 
whatever did accomplish that work, did it all; established the gene¬ 
ral register of heights; made every mountain a consistent part of the 
harmonious whole; worked out all the Lower Silurian valleys pre¬ 
cisely on one pattern; excavated every Devonian lake from Harvey’s 
Pond to Lake Huron alike; and cut to the same contour the subcar- 
boniferous cliffs along the whole line from the icy Delaware to the 
sunny Alabama. „ 

Of the seven or more chief points of speculation cited above, that 
of the split anticlinal is of course the most important. The admira¬ 
ble illustrations of the Austrian survey, which Haidinger and his 
noble coadjutors have been giving us for several years, repeat with 
variations all the curiosities of our Appalachian anticlinal structure, 
which were prepared for publication twenty years ago by the State 
Survey of Pennsylvania. But being chiefly sections of younger rocks 
than ours, the Austrian diagrams exhibit a more disturbed surface, 
so far as regards faults and slips, snapped anticlinals, upshoved syn¬ 
clinals, lapped folds, insertions or knife-edge intrusions of fragmen¬ 
tary strata, &c., while the main features are all the same. This may 
hereafter be adduced by some one as an evidence of the necessity of 
assigning quite a modern date to our contortions; inasmuch as dis¬ 
turbances, relatively as old (that is, occurring when the palaeozoic rocks 
had as yet obtained no greater consistency and compactness than the 
newer secondaries or tertiaries of the Alps) ought to have dealt as 
hardly with those, as the Austrian subterranean forces have dealt 
with these. But that would be a hazardous conclusion; for the na- 


Lesley. | 


196 


[March. 


ture of the bottom on which they lie probably determines, more than 
any other determining cause, the amount of disturbance in the 
normal curves of an uplift. The lateral thrust of horizontal tertiaries 
over a ragged bed of already upturned secondaries, or of flat and soft 
kainozoic strata over an already formed palmozoic topography, cannot 
result in symmetrical anticlinals and synclinals; and the amount of 
hitch and catch below, and therefore of crack and shove above, must be 
proportional, (1) to the roughness of the old surface, and (2) to the thin¬ 
ness of the new formation. But in the case of the Appalachians, both 
these proportionals are in the lowest ratio: (1) The palaeozoic mass is 
seven miles thick, and (2) It lies conformably on the u azoic,” if not 
on the u hypazoic ” surfaces, so far as we can see, or with local ex¬ 
ceptions; and there is reason to believe that where this is not the 
case geologically, it is the case practically; for the Potsdam sandstone, 
Quebec group, Taconic system or Primal Formation (whichever 
name we prefer), probably lies upon an already planed off surface of 
Laurentian primaries. Hence the wonderful symmetry of the palaeo¬ 
zoic vaults and basins, the almost total absence of faults (until one 
goes far south), and the infrequency and smallness of earthquakes. 

Hence also the high probability that the anticlinals were unbroken 
at the crest. A broken anticlinal must, in ninety-nine cases in a 
hundred, develop a fault. In the south, a system of broken anticli¬ 
nals have developed a magnificent system of parallel faults. If the 
symmetry of our northern anticlinals is the first argument against 
their being originally broken, the absence of faults is a second; a 
third is to be found in the many instances of unbroken small anticli¬ 
nals, unbroken even when overturned and collapsed ; a fourth is to 
be found in the absence of any trace of a break in the symmetrical 
end mountains, formed by the closing of the outcrop walls of an anti¬ 
clinal valley at both ends of it; a fifth is to be found in the side gap 
structure, which universally accompanies and characterizes the anti¬ 
clinal structure; a sixth is to be found in the total absence of lakes 
along the anticlinal axis; a seventh is to be found in the evident com¬ 
pensation for room lost by room gained along any given cross section. 

At this last point I think lies the solution of the problem. A true 
section of the crust, transverse to the waved structure, would show a 
perfect compensation between the sum of the outside and inside 
curves of the side by side lying anticlinals and synclinals; such a 
compensation as would distribute the slip between the rock faces, or 
back-and-belly planes of the stratification, through the whole mass, 
and thereby reduce it at any given point to a minimum. This dis- 


1863.J 


197 


[Lesley. 


tribution of the slickensides movement, taken into connection witli 
the crumpling up into subanticlinals, and the tongue-shaped crimp- 
ling of the softer measures inside of these*, must have relieved the 
strain upon the outside of the synclinals below and anticlinals above, 
and set quite aside the necessity for those yawning gaps which are 
supposed by many to have occurred along all the great anticlinal axes 
of the region. It may be safely taken for granted, that had such oc¬ 
curred on the upper side of the anticlinals, similar ones would have 
occurred on the under sides of the synclinals, of which we see no 
trace. That the slipping of stratum upon stratum has gone on every¬ 
where is everywhere evident. The softer formations have been 
most injured by it, and are penetrated by crumplings when the 
harder strata have splintered and fissured. But, as a whole, the pli- 
cating energy must have acted with a steady evenness of thrust, 
which carried up the anticlinal waves of the crust unbroken, and in 
some cases to a height of between five and ten miles above the pre¬ 
sent surface level. 

By what agency could these masses have been removed, without 
leaving Alpine ranges, with serrated summits and protuberant spurs ? 
Can we imagine the Pyrenees to be reduced by ordinary atmospheric 
erosion to the condition of the Jura? Giving even infinite time, 
will the desired result be ever attained ? On the other hand, given 
a homogeneous element with sufficient force, acting either by one or 
by repeated blows, the result as we now see it on the present ground 
was demonstrably certain to come from the conditions which we see 
to have existed on the former ground. No one will deny that water, 
if obtained in sufficient quantity at a sufficient velocity, would be 
such an agent. In the acknowledged instability of the crust of the 
earth, and in its acknowledged less stability in ancient times than 
now, we find the possibility, nay, we feel the certainty, that the 
oceans have at times been launched across the continents, and we 
need nothing more to satisfy all the conditions for an explanation of 
Appalachian topography. 

Parts of a private letter from Leo Lesquereux, Esq., of 
Columbus, Ohio, were read respecting the fossil botany of the 
coal, and the publication of manuscript memoirs in prepara- 

* See Plate Y for a few instances of this structure as yet unpublished. Many 
others, even more instructive, can he obtained in our various collieries. The 
western edge of the Broad Ton basin is remarkable for the number, symmetry and 
regular sequence of these tongues ; but they are common to all the anthracite 
basins. Fig. 5 is an accurate representation of one near Beaver Meadow. 

VOL. IX.— 2a 


Lesquereux.] 


198 


[March. 


tion to illustrate it; and also respecting the character of the 
Millstone Grit or Subcarboniferous Conglomerate in the Far 
West. Of the first he says : 

If it is finished according to my original plan, it should have at 
least one hundred and fifty plates. There is no fossil flora of the 
coal; that is, there is no work on the subject, where one can find 
figured and described all the species of any coal-field. All has been 
made by fragments. Brogniart’s fossil flora is not half finished, and 
will not be continued. Bindley and Hutton have published plants 
of all the palaeozoic rocks of England, but all is mixed there, and no 
part is complete. Goppert has all his published fossil plants dis¬ 
seminated through a number of books, of which no one contains a 
complete series. Now, for the fossil flora of our coal-measures, I 
would like to publish drawings and descriptions of all the species, 
even if these species are already known and published from the coal 
of Europe ; for a double purpose : firstly, in order to enable the 
student to proceed in the study of our fossil plants without the cost 
and incumbrance of a large library, which is now impossible; and 
secondly, to show from the beginning of the vegetation of our earth, 
the remarkable similitude of American with European types, always 
broken by characters of dissimilarity as difficult to appreciate now, as 
they were at the epoch of the coal. ... It is an entirely American 
and original work. . . . You well know that everything has been, so 
to say, put in my hand for such a work. After the Pennsylvania 
survey, I have had those of Kentucky, of Arkansas, of Illinois, In¬ 
diana, Ohio; this last on my own cost. All the best collections of 
fossil plants of the United States have been sent to me for examina¬ 
tion and classification, and thus I have seen an immense number of 
specimens, without counting those which I have collected myself. 
Would it not be wrong to abandon and lose the result of a work of 
so many years, and the advantage of so fine an opportunity for study, 
and leave the work unfinished, merely because I do not know how or 
when it can be published ? I will go through if I can, or as long 
as I can, and if the work is good, it will come out in some way, even 
if I am not more of this world. . . . 

I do not send you now the plates of the fossil plants of the Ter¬ 
tiary, ten in number. ... All the Tertiary fossil plants that I 
have had under my examination, those of Mississippi, of Ken¬ 
tucky, and of Vancouver’s Island, would make about fifteen 
plates. . . . Some questions of true scientific importance might 


1863.] 


199 


[Lesquereux. 


be discussed with their publication: 1st. The relation of the 
actual flora with that of the Tertiary. 2d. The comparative 
identity of typical forms both on the Pacific and Atlantic shores. 
By comparative identity I understand relation of the now living 
plants on both the Atlantic and the Pacific shore, with the fossil flora 
of the same country; the relation of the Vancouver Tertiary with the 
California flora, and the relation of the Tertiary of Mississippi, &c., 
with the Atlantic flora. Of course this does not indicate a relation 
of vegetation between both sides of the continent, either at the Ter¬ 
tiary epoch or now; on the contrary. 3d. The difference of flora of 
Europe and of America, at the epoch of the Tertiary, showing the 
separation of both continents. You know that Heer argues, on a 
supposed but unreal identity of typical forms at the Tertiary time, 
and concludes in favor of a Continental connection, either by an 
Atlantide, or something of this kind. 4th. The relation of forms of 
the Tertiary and Cretaceous floras, &c., &c. . . . 

With this letter I send you two sections of the Arkansas conglo¬ 
merate measures, and the underlying subcarboniferous measures. I 
am, indeed, very sorry that my sections were not made with more 
details and exact measurements; but I am not answerable for the 
deficiency. My assistant, Mr. Cox, had charge of the geological part 
of our explorations, and ... we had for our measurements only an 
aneroid barometer, which, though pretty good, gave us only approxi¬ 
mate altitudes. 

The first general section, showing the true position of the coal in 
relation to the inferior strata, was taken fourteen miles southwest of 
Fayetteville, in Washington County, on the high waters of Middle 
Fork of White River. 

FEET. INCHES. 

1. Millstone grit in alternating beds of coarse, gritty sandstone, 

conglomerate hard sandstone with small pebbles, ferrugi¬ 
nous hard bands, and soft shaly sandstone and shale, . 300 

2. Gray laminated shales passing at some places to ferrugi¬ 
nous, very hard conglomerate. Shale band, ... 2 

3. Coal, IS 

4. Hard, black fire-clay full of stigmaria, passing at the base 

to clay-iron ore, ..6 

5. Hard limestone with Encrinites, Terebratulae, Archimedes, 

&c., &c. Upper Archimede limestone. It appears to be 
united with the lower bed sometimes, and then thickens to 

20 feet, . . . . . . . . • .10 

6. Blue soft shales with pebbles of carbonate of iron, . . 20 

7. Shaly sandstone (gray metal of the miners), ... 30 



Lesquereux.] 


200 


[March. 


8. Hard coarse limestone, with great abundance of the same 
fossils as the upper one, ....... 

9. Cherty limestone, mostly hard silex, . 

10. Coarse sandstone with plants, Stigmaria, Sigillaria, Le- 

pidodendron, &c.,* ...... . 

11. Coarse limestone,lower Archimedes bed or middle bed? 

12. Coarse and soft brown sandstone with a great number 

of fossil shells (Knob sandstone ?) . 

13. Hard black limestones with fossils, . 

14. Black and yellow shales with carbonate of iron (Devo¬ 
nian ?) • . . . . . . • • • 


10 

6 

60 

30 

100 

40 

40 


The second section is that of the Millstone Grit, and is taken from 
the base to the top of the Horsehead Mountain, a part of the Boston 
Mountain in Johnson County. It is, 


FEET. INCHES. 

1. Calcareous shales and argillous sandstone, containing a 

quantity of fossil shells. The top of the hill is covered, 
and apparently has a stratum of conglomerate; at least 
loose pieces of conglomerate are found above the exposed 
fossiliferous shaly sandstone. From top of hill down, . 30 

2. Compact and shaly sandstones in alternating beds, . . 120 

3. Massive, coarse, gritty sandstone, ..... 80 

4. Shaly sandstone, sometimes in banks, covered with ver¬ 

micular impressions, and cut by hard bands (ferruginous 
shales),.. 120 

5. Coarse, gritty sandstone, with conglomerate at the upper 

part. The pebbles are small, not larger than a bean, . 20 

6. Hard, compact, gritty sandstone in banks, alternating 

with shales and shaly sandstone, ..... 520 

7. Red, yellow, and soft ferruginous shales and shaly sand¬ 
stone, .......... 150 

8. Gray, hard, micaceous shales, mixed with pebbles of car¬ 
bonate of iron, and having fossil plants especially near the 
base, ........ from 10 to 70 

(These shales at Horsehead have at some banks only six 
feet, at others as high as seventy feet. They pass to sand¬ 
stone at the upper part.) 

9. Black, soft, earthy shales, ...... 1 

10. Coal, . . . . . . . .10 inches to 1 6 

11. Fireclay, black, hard, full of stigmaria to level of the 
creeks. 


* In Illinois, the sandstone has the same plants, and is overlaid by one bed 
only of the Archimedes limestone. In Indiana, where this sandstone is absent, it 
is replaced by a thin bed of coal just under the upper Archimedes. 


1863.J 


201 


[Lesquereux. 


Remarks concerning the nature and variety of the Millstone Grit of 
Arkansas, are noted many times in my diary. Thus, I read : Pass¬ 
ing the hills or divide between the affluents of White River, I find 
the Millstone Grit of still more varied appearance. Sometimes it is 
a coarse, hard sandstone, a compound of fine grains of quartz, true 
millstone grit very hard, and in thick banks. These are separated 
or underlaid by soft, easily disintegrated, shaly sandstone, and thus 
they break in large massive banks or pieces thrown down along the 
slopes of the hills, or in the narrow valleys. Sometimes the same 
formation is mostly a compound of shaly sandstone, alternating with 
ferruginous shales, separated by thin beds of clay iron ore, or even 
of hard fireclay, without any trace of conglomerate. Sometimes the 
sandstone becomes black, ferruginous, and is here and there cut by 
a narrow streak of conglomerate, whose quartz pebbles are rarely 
larger than a small hazel-nut, generally much smaller. The Millstone 
Grit-measures are far more persistent in their thickness in Arkansas 
than in the East, and as the top of it has not been seen anywhere, 
the highest mountains being too low, it may be supposed that its 
thickness is greater than it has been measured at Horsehead Moun¬ 
tain. 

Of course, though the variety of appearance and the great thick¬ 
ness of the Millstone Grit of Arkansas can be compared with some 
parts of the coal-measures of Nova Scotia, referred by geologists of 
that State to true coal-measures, we cannot conclude an identity of 
formations. From what you published in the Proceedings of the 
Society, I agree with you, and readily believe that the Nova Scotian 
basin is a separated member of our great American coal-fields. The 
flora of both the Canadian and the United States coal-fields is appa¬ 
rently the same. At least, of all the plants published by Bunbury, 
too few in number, indeed, to permit a satisfactory comparison, there 
is now no one that has not been found in our coal-fields. Odontop- 
teris cuneata, Bunb., was for many years unknown in our coal-mea¬ 
sures, but I have found it in plenty two years ago at Murphysboro’, 
Illinois. This and a few other of Bunbury’s species have not been 
found in Europe. But contrary to our opinion, we have these facts, 
that the anthracite basin of Pennsylvania is from all appearance the 
shores of a coal-basin. That Dawson finds in Canada an abundance 
of fossil coniferous wood ; that the English naturalists assert that 
such wood is also in plenty in the coal-measures of England, while I 
can find none in ours; that also from Dana’s assertion, the fauna of 
the coal-measures of Nova Scotia is rather related to that of England 


Lesquereux.] 


202 


[March. 


than to ours. If it is so, we would have on our continent an ano¬ 
maly of relation contradicted by what we know from the other forma¬ 
tions. Good and long palseontological researches may help to settle 
the question. 

It is certain that our coal-measures are increasing in thickness 
eastward, especially for the sandstone and the shale strata. Admit¬ 
ting, if not a continuity, at least a contemporaneity of formation 
under the same influences, and a continuation of increase of thick¬ 
ness in the same direction and the same proportion, this would already 
give us many hundred feet of difference for Canada. I understand 
moreover, that a shore formation of the coal has been necessarily 
subjected to a great many local variations, which could not reach an 
inland one. It is clear that the invasion of the sea, bearing with it 
sand and other materials, could not always penetrate the inland part 
of the basin, and cover the whole of it. This accounts for the multi¬ 
plication of strata, and the dividing of coal strata into thin and nume¬ 
rous seams. Of course, if such divisions did happen on the shores, 
while the internal part of the basin continued in the same state of a 
continual peat growing, boggy marshes, the vegetation of these partial 
coal-seams cannot be variable. So local vegetation is always affected 
or directed by the general one, and the difference of vegetation of 
our coal strata becomes especially evident, after such cataclysms or 
such changes of level under the influence of which the whole extent 
of the coal-measures was covered with deposits, brought by water or 
formed under it, viz., sandstone or limestone. 

It is therefore evident, that even if it was based on well ascertained 
facts, the sixth objection of Professor Dawson would be of little im¬ 
portance, especially in its application to our coal-measures. But I 
fiud it extraordinary to say the least, when compared to other asser¬ 
tions of the same author. In his last valuable paper on the flora of 
the Devonian period (Quarterly Journal, November, 1862), he says, 
page 328 : “ Some species which appear early in the Devonian period, 
continue to its close without entering the Carboniferous; and the 
great majority of the species, even of the Upper Devonian, do not 
reappear in the Carboniferous period, but a few species extend from 
the Upper Devonian into the Lower Carboniferous, and thus estab¬ 
lish a real passage from the earlier to the later flora. The connec¬ 
tion thus established between the Upper Devonian and the Lower 
Carboniferous, is much less intimate than that which subsists between 
the latter and the true coal-measures. Another way of stating this 
is, that there is a constant gain in the number of genera and species, 



1863.] 


203 


[Lesquereux. 




from the Lower to the Upper Devonian, but that at the close of the 
Devonian, many species and some genera disappear. In the Lower 
Carboniferous, the fora is again poor, though retaining some of the 
Devonian species, and it goes on increasing up to the period of the 
Middle coal-measures, and this by the addition of species quite dis¬ 
tinct from those of the Devonian period Is not this acknowledging 
a continual change in the vegetation of the coal epoch, from its be¬ 
ginning to its end ? for we cannot admit of course that according to 
the views of Professor Dawson, such a change has taken place in the 
Lower Carboniferous, to stop at once at what he calls the Middle 
coal-measures. And can we not then conclude that with careful and 
long researches, at such places where the stratification is perfectly 
well fixed, these changes of vegetation may be recognized in strata 
of different horizon, and thus used for comparison at other localities ? 

The discussion concerning the true Carboniferous measures is, as 
you say, tedious and useless, at least when it is made without com¬ 
parison with what we have around us.It is certain that the 

plants of the red shales (Vespertine or Ponent of Rogers), are differ¬ 
ent from those of the coal-bearing measures. There is, indeed, a gap 
in the vegetation between the Red shales and the Conglomerate, even 
near their horizontal line of union at Pottsville, while in the West, 
the true coal vegetation descends as low as the Upper Archimedes 
limestone, or even lower. This anomaly is to my persuasion merely 
apparent, or the result of causes without connection with the stratifi¬ 
cation. The vegetation of the coal must be always considered as a 
peculiar, and if I can say so, as a local one, born and continued under 
peculiar influences, and thus without a necessary specific connection 
with that of the open and dryland; a true peat or bog vegetation. 
I have many times taken the trouble to compare the vegetation of 
our peat bogs with that of the country at large, to show how the first 
one would be insufficient to give us even a slight idea of the last. 
Now the shales of the Old Red sandstone were evidently formed by 
open extensive flats, alternately covered with water or left dry, and 
thus, having a peculiar vegetation far different from that of the Bogs, 
which were always under the influence of a continual internal and 
external humidity. Compare, for example, the vegetation of the 
flats of Holland around Groningue, with that of the peat bogs of the 
same country, and seen just near the border of the same flats. There 
is not a single species common to both formations. The same can 
be said of. our coast flats, and in New Jersey, you have the same 
peculiar difference of vegetation near the shores; the one covering 



204 


[April. 


all the part that is reached by marine water, or rather by the tides; 
the others beginning in lagoons, where the water ceases to be sub¬ 
jected to alternate changes. Thus it has happened, to my persuasion 
at least, that there has been formed at some place red sandstone, with 
peculiar remains of vegetation and coal shales, though inferior in 
geological horizon with true coal plants. And for this reason, I say, 
that we have to admit the vegetation of the Old Red and that of the 
Coal, without putting too great reliance in the data furnished by 
palaeontological botany concerning the age of stratification. But re¬ 
mark that I say this only of the red shales, compared with the coal 
formation; for indeed, as Professor Dawson says it, the slow change 
of vegetation in the coal-measures (putting aside the Old Red), is 
apparent from the lowest coal under the Archimedes limestone, to 
the highest strata of the coal-measures. 

Pending nominations Nos. 481 to 491, and new nominations 
Nos. 492, 498 were read. 

And the Society was adjourned. 


Stated Meeting , April 3, 1863. 

Present, eleven members. 

Dr. Wood, President, in the Chair. 

Letters accepting membership were received from F. 
Forchhammer, dated Copenhagen, March 11th, 1863, and 
from Max Muller, dated 64 High Street, Oxford, March 
14th, 1863. 

Letters acknowledging the receipt of publications were re¬ 
ceived from the Royal Society at Upsal, September 15th; 
the Royal Geographical Society at Vienna, October 15th; 
the Royal Geological Institute at Vienna, October 4th; 
the Society at Wiesbaden, November 1st; the Geological So¬ 
ciety at London, January 7th ; and the Antiquarian Society 
at Worcester, March 2d, 1863. 





* 





